My latest game Strawberry thief has been featured in the V&A Dundee’s Design in Motion Exhibition. The gallery of work, featuring various forms of art and design takes place on the Travelling Gallery bus. Designers include Geoffrey Mann, Anarkik3D, Sara Robertson and Sarah Taylor, the Digital Design Studio, Lynne MacLachlan and fashion designer Holly Fulton, whose designs have been worn by Rihanna and featured in fashion magazines. Inside the exhibition, visitors can play the Strawberry Thief game, as well as view sketches, prototypes, artwork and see a short film about the making of the game. One side of the bus has an illustration of the Strawberry Thief game that fades from the sketch into color, custom created by Ellen Brown. The bus is stopping at various locations in Scotland and will reach the V&A in London on June 21st. Below are some of my favourite pictures from the tour so far, taken from the V&A Dundee and Travelling Gallery Twitter accounts. You can learn more about the exhibition on the V&A Dundee website and downloading the Design Scotland App.

During he past month, I returned to the schools I visited last year to see how their game design projects had developed. I am working with 20 different schools, so the designs have been showcased in many different ways depending on the schools. Of course there was no right or wrong way to approach the task, so it was especially interesting to me to see what the children had created and what they had learned.

Shorty after I finished working on Strawberry Thief, I took part in an event for the V&A Museum of Childhood and The London Design Festival. I want to talk a little bit about the events of the day, as there was lots of exciting things going on.

Near the entrance to the museum, there was a mini gallery showing beautiful pieces of work from games like Monument Valley and Moshi Monsters. We wanted to showcase examples of sketches and works in progress, rather than finished pieces like posters and advertisements.

Children who visited the museum also got the opportunity to do some 3D printing, and could create their own characters on cups – in the style of Rex Crowle, who was the creative lead on the Tearaway game for PSVita.

I spent the day in the classrooms of the museum running workshops for 5-7 year olds. In the early discussions of the event, it was decided that we wanted to do a workshop that links to the museum where children also get to make their own interactive pieces. Thinking of a way for such young children to do a bit of coding worried me at first, but after a bit of research, I found an amazing iPad App called ScratchJr which allows children to draw characters that they can programme to move around and even control.

I asked for an assortment of museum objects to act as inspiration for the children. I then took them through how to create characters and backgrounds and get them to move and interact on screen. I showed off a simple example of tapping on a girl, which moves her, and kicks a football on collision. The programming aspect of the app works really well, as it is very visual with each behaviour acting as a piece of a jigsaw. This seemed to make the children more experimental with the program, trying lots of different options.

For my newest project, I have been working with Dundee City Council and Abertay University’s Outreachand Public Engagement Network to bring games art and design to Dundee’s Primary Schools.Although children play games, most of them have no idea how they are created. In my hour long lessons, I go over what goes into making digital games as well as the skills, roles and careers. When they are given the chance to come up with their initial game ideas, I suggest that they become inspired by things they are studying or inspirations. This has led to many games about rain forests and World War Two.

In order to get the children thinking about making a game based on inspirations, I show them my Strawberry Thief game, inspired by William Morris, and a few other games inspired by art, such as Monument Valley and The Cat That Got The Milk.

Dundee has many active code clubs which often take place in schools at lunchtime or after school. These are great workshops which teach programming through programs like Scratch and Kodu. My workshops can run alongside these code clubs, as they are focused on art, design and creativity. I am very interested in the children telling their own stores through games design, and thinking aboutaesthetics and game feel.

As well as this new project, I am at the early stages of a new game idea! Continuing on from my work at the V&A, I am keen to do another game inspired by famous British artists. I have decided to look at the work of Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s wife Margaret Macdonald, as well as the art of her sister Frances. I’m in the early stages of research at the moment, and look forward to sharing more info!

We are holding an event at the Apple Store in Regent Street, London where I'll be talking about the game and giving a live demonstration. This takes place on 31/10 7pm - 8pm The tickets are free, and you can book on the Apple website here - Apple.com/uk/retail/regentstreet/

We have recently added some exciting features to the game ready for Protoplay in a few weeks time. In the video you can see some of the new backgrounds for the game, and see how the levels transition. We have also added a new way to move the bird by simply drawing a line, although this still needs to her perfected.

Last month, I shared pieces of concept art, videos and music on my new game Strawberry Thief, as well as a short piece of early gameplay footage. Now some of the art assets are starting to be implemented in the game along with interactive elements.

First of all, you can see that newer backgrounds are in the game. It has a scrolling effect, kind of similar to how my early prototype I made at the V&A worked. This way, the player can explore more of the pattern and see it repeat, just as it would on a curtain or wallpaper.

You can also see that the player can now collect flowers (Which I often referred to as pollen in previous posts) These flowers will enable the player to colour the level. When they run out of colour, they will have to find the flowers again. At the moment, the colour level is represented by something that looks like a health bar, but in the final version, it will be shown in the petals trailing the bird.

We also have new artwork for the bird. We decided to change the character from the brown thrush from the pattern to the blue and white bird, as it is the one stealing the strawberries in the original print. We still need to include all the animations for the bird.

Cameron has also animated sections of the Strawberry Thief pattern. These animations will trigger when the player has coloured certain sections of the print.

The next stage of the project will be adding in the separate levels, carefully planing how they transition from one to another. We will also need to include things like a loading screen, in-game menus, and preparations for the Dare Protoplay Festival, where the game will be shown off for the first time.

Now that my team is working on assets for Strawberry Thief, I want to share some concept work that has been completed in the last few weeks. This short video is made up of storyboard frames (by Ellen Brown), which shows how the game will run from start to finish. The audio in the gameplay section, by Neil Cullen, is sample of how the adaptive sound track will work, with the complexity of the music growing with how much of the pattern has been coloured. The audio in the menu and loadings screens is by Johannes Brahms.

These clips are visualisations by Cameron Moore, which show how the sketches could become colourful, and how it would bleed out once a section of the pattern is complete.

Here are some concepts for the line that the user draws for the bird to follow, also by Cameron.

Finally, here is a quick video of the build so far, with the colouring mechanic implemented (but not finalised)